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Did You Know?

Trivia:

The title was taken from a friend of Buñuel, José Bergamin, who was writing a play with that title but never finished it. When Buñuel wanted to title his film, he asked for the rights of the title from his friend, but he answered that there was no trouble, because it was taken from the Bible, the Book of Revelation.See more »

Goofs:

Boom mic visible: After the butler trips in the dining room, the lady of the house follows him into the kitchen. While they speak the boom mic can clearly be seen at the bottom of the screen, extending out from under a table.See more »

'L'enfer c'est les autres' (Hell is other people), wrote the French
existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, in his play, 'No Exit'
(sometimes referred to - and has been performed - as 'In Camera'), that
surmised the narrative of three deceased individuals locked in a room,
one that they eventually realise they will be spending eternity
together in. Luis Bunuel used this simple meta-narrative concept of
people trapped, to create one of his finest satires, and his first
explicitly surrealist film since L'Age D'Or (1930). After Bunuel's
previous film, Viridiana (1961), was condemned by the Vatican and
banned in his native country of Spain (and where it was made), he moved
back to Mexico where he had been making films throughout the 1940's and
50's, and produced a scabrous attack on General Francisco Franco's
Spanish fascist dictatorship, and the institutions, and bourgeois
facets of the country that were founded on the destruction of the poor
and the proletariat, during the civil war that ended in 1939.

Whilst the film works as political allegory, on a base narrative level,
it functions as an irrational comedy; or farce. The guests arrive for a
lavish dinner, but as they arrive, the maids leave, and progressively
all the hired help leave them. Once dinner is complete, the guests
congregate in the living room, but they all begin to realise that they
are unable to leave the room at all. When this is discovered we observe
that they attempt to go, but are either distracted or simply stop or
break down at the boundary of the room. This continues through days,
possibly months - the characters concept of time completely
obliterated. The group falls into decay, primitive urges overwhelm
them, and as this representation of Western Civilisation breaks down,
the group become brutally savage, turning on the host of the dinner,
demanding sacrifice. The group slaughter the lambs that were originally
to be used in a dinner prank.

At first the guests seem to simply ignore what is happening to them,
and continue with inane chat. Exterior to the "party", the grounds are
surrounded, but not even the police are able to enter, given the same
mysterious barrier that prevents entry. It's almost a perfect parable,
illustrating the ignorance of the Spanish bourgeoisie, as they strip
the rights and dignity of the proletariat (here the maids leave on
their arrival), whilst divorcing their minds from the violence and
corruption of a dictatorship. But with this, it also shows how even the
"civilised" sections of society, once they are stripped of their social
status, their inherited manners of "education", and their ability to
use wealth, the fall into absolute decay, probably falling apart
greater than the lower classes, with their lessened moral outlook, and
an almost infantile inability to deal with regular obstacles.

Winner of the 1962 Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, this was to
begin what become (rather belatedly for the 62 year old) his most
productive, celebrated and interesting period of his career, based in
Paris, beginning with Belle de Jour (1967) and ending with That Obscure
Object of Desire (1977). This is the period that he developed and
expanded his own style, and his unique vision on film. The
Exterminating Angel has also given inspiration for others. It is a
clear influence on Jean-Luc Godard's wonderfully bleak and satiric
depiction of the bourgeoisie and the end of Western Civilisation, Week
End (1967). The idea was also utilised in one sketch from Monty
Python's Meaning of Life (1983), that saw the guests leaving as ghosts.
This is by far, one of his greatest achievements, beautifully realised,
with comic touches, and moments of surrealism that both bemuse and
amuse.

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